Uncontrollable crash

[Airgoz]

Good luck with that after reading all the post in this forum about sudden power failure issues. I would never fly with battery below 100%. Battery might read 80% but that not under a load once a load is applied you could see voltage drop to unsafe levels very quickly.

 

[Airgoz]

Starting a flight at 90 or 80 or 70 percent battery only means you will fly for a shorter length of time. It does not cause catastrophic failures to your phantom until it reached critical battery levels.


Sent from my iPhone using PhantomPilots mobile app

Good luck with that after reading all the post in this forum about sudden power failure issues. I would never fly with battery below 100%. Battery might read 80% but that's not under a load once a load is applied you could see voltage drop to unsafe levels very quickly.

 

[FrequentFlyer]

Good luck with that after reading all the post in this forum about sudden power failure issues. I would never fly with battery below 100%. Battery might read 80% but that not under a load once a load is applied you could see voltage drop to unsafe levels very quickly.

The thing is, is that YOU always fly from 100% down to 30% or whatever EVERY time you go out to fly. It flys just the same from 100% down to 30% or lower just fine. So, DJI may recommend starting with a freshly charged battery but it flys the same taking it up for a couple of laps starting at 70% or 50%. YOU JUST HAVE SHORTER FLIGHT TIMES.


Sent from my iPhone using PhantomPilots mobile app

 

[Mark The Droner]

The thing is, is that YOU always fly from 100% down to 30% or whatever EVERY time you go out to fly. It flys just the same from 100% down to 30% or lower just fine. So, DJI may recommend starting with a freshly charged battery but it flys the same taking it up for a couple of laps starting at 70% or 50%. YOU JUST HAVE SHORTER FLIGHT TIMES.


Sent from my iPhone using PhantomPilots mobile app

It would be nice if this was true, but the veterans on this site know that if you start off with 70% or 50% battery, you could very well show 10% within a minute or two, and the next thing you know, that dot in the sky is falling to the ground at 50 feet per second and you can do nothing but stare with your mouth hangin' open...

 

[kcmusa]

Those of you who claim you 'do it all the time with no issue' , are you holding full descent for more than 3 seconds?. And to be clear, I am in no way spreading mis-information. I'm simply sharing my experience. Hopefully it will save someone from an 'abrupt landing'.

when I am up 400 feet it takes a lot longer than 3 sec to descend to my landing point.

 

[Imabiggles]

I know for a FACT that it will. I've seen it happen. And I've seen numerous cases of it happening on this forum. There is a thread where it is discussed.

Well, so much for your fact. My P3A is on the latest firmware and it DOES NOT stop the motors in flight when the left stick is in full descent position. I was at 300', full down throttle to 30 feet, and guess what? It was still flying.

 

[pounder35]

It felt from 20 to 10, then the blades rotated a little bit again keeping the drone at place, but after a second it felt the remaining 10m and landed very hard on grass. The battery, the memory card and three of the four blades seems to be unharmed, but the drone is done.

I wouldn't be too quick to right off the P3 entirely. I clipped a tree top two weeks ago and completely ripped off the gimbal and camera assy . Even though I hit the ground pretty hard my P3A was in decent shape. I ordered the assembly (about $300 USD) and replaced it myself. Very simple repair. Even though the P series has dropped in price it was still less than half the cost of a replacement.

 

[hidaven]

Left stick down in the air will NOT turn your P3 off period. Now, can the quad get fooled? Maybe. You should fly your P3 DOWN AND NEVER DO A FULL DECENT IN PLACE DUE TO PROP WASH. So back to the OP'S issue, in less he pulled BOTH sticks down and in, or out why did his bird shut down? If not a user shut down I'd be looking into a faulty battery contact.

 

[dronepilottampa]

Hi everyone,
My dji3-professional today dropped like a stone from 20m. I think it is unrepairable:-( It was my fourth flight that day. The others been okay, except for some warnings of weak transmission, but, still manageable. On my last flight after just one minute (battery at.ca. 70%), the status on the App on my iPad went to "disconnected". So I could not use the iPad anymore, however, since the drone was just ca. 25 meters away and did not fly high, I did not push the return home button, but decided to fly it home manually. I might have pushed the left stick to the ground, but, as I understand, this should not stop the motor in mid-air! I'm just happy no one got hurt. However, before I buy a new one, I must find out, where the problem lies, because this is just too dangerous. Not to imagine the drone would have fallen on someone's head or a driving car...
The flight record shows five! last flights of 0m Distance and 0m altitude with no GPS.
I guess, this is all my last flight. And I remember to had GPS in the green, otherwise I would not dare to fly. Any ideas what went wrong?

I have read on other posts that if you push your left stick on your control down and to the right, it should not stop the engines in mid-flight but if in naza mode there are FOUR methods to accidentally do a CSC shutdown, not sure exactly what they are though. I would pull your flight logs also and let someone analyse them for you, you should be able to retrieve either from the bird or from your iPad. Sorry for your loss, If it is truly unrepairable I would suggest gutting it and selling every working part and non working part, just disclose that information. I lost one of my P3 pros to the side of a building while doing a yall and I sold all the parts and made about $500 so then I bought another one. Good luck!


-Mark

 

[Oso]

Left stick down in the air will NOT turn your P3 off period. Now, can the quad get fooled? Maybe. You should fly your P3 DOWN AND NEVER DO A FULL DECENT IN PLACE DUE TO PROP WASH. So back to the OP'S issue, in less he pulled BOTH sticks down and in, or out why did his bird shut down? If not a user shut down I'd be looking into a faulty battery contact.

I have read on other posts that if you push your left stick on your control down and to the right, it should not stop the engines in mid-flight but if in naza mode there are FOUR methods to accidentally do a CSC shutdown, not sure exactly what they are though. I would pull your flight logs also and let someone analyse them for you, you should be able to retrieve either from the bird or from your iPad. Sorry for your loss, If it is truly unrepairable I would suggest gutting it and selling every working part and non working part, just disclose that information. I lost one of my P3 pros to the side of a building while doing a yall and I sold all the parts and made about $500 so then I bought another one. Good luck!

FYI that it was already established via log analysis earlier in this thread that he did a CSC.
Uncontrollable crash

 

[MrGarvey]

Left stick down in the air will NOT turn your P3 off period. Now, can the quad get fooled? Maybe. You should fly your P3 DOWN AND NEVER DO A FULL DECENT IN PLACE DUE TO PROP WASH. So back to the OP'S issue, in less he pulled BOTH sticks down and in, or out why did his bird shut down? If not a user shut down I'd be looking into a faulty battery contact.

Can you explain the prop wash problem a bit? I'm not familiar with that.

 

[Oso]

Can you explain the prop wash problem a bit? I'm not familiar with that.

It's called VRS (vortex ring state). Phantom models prior to the P3 were much more susceptible to it, but the P3 is designed in such a way that the chance of VRS is almost completely eliminated. Still possible, but only in rare circumstances. If you flew prior to the P3, you would probably still have a fear of it happening all the time.

Vortex Ring state - P3P - things I try to mitigate it...

 

[Buffalochip]

Hi everyone,
My dji3-professional today dropped like a stone from 20m. I think it is unrepairable:-( It was my fourth flight that day. The others been okay, except for some warnings of weak transmission, but, still manageable. On my last flight after just one minute (battery at.ca. 70%), the status on the App on my iPad went to "disconnected". So I could not use the iPad anymore, however, since the drone was just ca. 25 meters away and did not fly high, I did not push the return home button, but decided to fly it home manually. I might have pushed the left stick to the ground, but, as I understand, this should not stop the motor in mid-air! I'm just happy no one got hurt. However, before I buy a new one, I must find out, where the problem lies, because this is just too dangerous. Not to imagine the drone would have fallen on someone's head or a driving car...
The flight record shows five! last flights of 0m Distance and 0m altitude with no GPS.
I guess, this is all my last flight. And I remember to had GPS in the green, otherwise I would not dare to fly. Any ideas what went wrong?

I had the same thing happen to my P2 Vision+. I had just started up as I always do. Let it settle in at about 8 feet to make sure all seems well. Had 90% battery. Took it up to about 30 feet with 9 satellites. All of a sudden my iPhone made a critical honking sound and the bird crashed straight down. Hit the ground hard but the camera was still connected as it made constant gyrations and the "remove camera gimbal" message came up. It is toast I'm afraid. Anyone want it for parts? I'll sell the batteries and controller cheap.

 

[MikeyOnline]

I always shut my motors off on a hand catch with left stick full down for 3 seconds. So after taking it up to 400 ft once and being afraid to use full left stick to bring it down, it took ages to get it back to the ground and I wondered: what would happen if I needed to bring it down quickly and would full down shut the motors off? I searched and found threads here saying that's not a problem: it won't shut the motors off if it sees it still decending, so on the next flight I was more comfortable. To the point that I flew up to 400 ft a couple times and tried full down on the left stick for a good 10 seconds, just to get myself acquanted with prop wash and what it does, how much forward motion I could give it to counter the prop wash, etc. My primary thought was, what if something happens to the battery and I'm at 400 ft and need to descend quickly or it starts to rain and I need to come down (believe it or not, it can pour here with full sunshine and ONE cloud off in the distance)? Then I started reading this thread and thought WOW... maybe I shouldn't have tried that. But that said, even after holding full down on the left stick multiple times for probably 5-10 seconds each time, the motors never shut off mid flight. Only after I hand caught it. So as others have said, I think "myth busted"... as long as the bird doesn't have some other problem.

Mike

 

[JerEl]

Can you explain the prop wash problem a bit? I'm not familiar with that.

VRS as the above prior poster said is very dangerous for copters. When descending straight down you may notice a wobbling...This is VRS. This was the reason one of the choppers went down in the raid on Bin Laden's compound. The VRS was aggravated by the high walls where they were trying to land. The pilot said he just started a rapid descent which he recognized as VRS and managed to move enough in the tight quarters and partially got out of it. He still crashed but it regained enough lift for a "softer" crash keeping everyone on board from dying or being paralyzed from compression of their vertebra. If I'm very high I usually do a spiral descent so that isn't an issue. Even though DJI lowered the max descent rate an updraft could still initiate it.

 

[MrGarvey]

VRS as the above prior poster said is very dangerous for copters. When descending straight down you may notice a wobbling...This is VRS. This was the reason one of the choppers went down in the raid on Bin Laden's compound. The VRS was aggravated by the high walls where they were trying to land. The pilot said he just started a rapid descent which he recognized as VRS and managed to move enough in the tight quarters and partially got out of it. He still crashed but it regained enough lift for a "softer" crash keeping everyone on board from dying or being paralyzed from compression of their vertebra. If I'm very high I usually do a spiral descent so that isn't an issue. Even though DJI lowered the max descent rate an updraft could still initiate it.

So it's only something to be concerned about near high walls? Or all the time?

Thank you for the info! I've never heard of this before.

 

[MikeyOnline]

So it's only something to be concerned about near high walls? Or all the time?

Thank you for the info! I've never heard of this before.

All the time! I've seen videos where DJI claims it should be stable with full down on the left stick but I've tested mine and it had some pretty good wobble if you try to go straight down. A lot depends on the winds at altitude. The trick is, move around and don't try to come straight down: that at least helps and most times will eliminate it. Spiraling or even just moving forward/backword helps. Even though I tested it, I did so pretty high so I'd have a chance to recover but I still have a fear that if some winds help to initiate a "death spiral", you may not be able to recover in time.

Mike

 

[Not A Speck Of Cereal]

I am 100% sure. Only one stick is required. I personally think its silly.

NEGATIVE!

This is just not true, never was. What could you be thinking of?

Edit: one stick (left stick down in Mode 2) is good enough if a) it's on the ground and after 3 seconds, the craft detects that it has not descended any during that period, or b) same thing with hand catch. But it's ALWAYS been this way, there's nothing new there.

Both the traditional CSC or the new procedure of emergency shutdown (forget what it is right now) are two-control functions, not a one stick only thing.

 

[flyNfrank]

Once the barometer sensor reads the A/C has stopped downward movement by stick control, the A/C will then be able to be shut down by the left stick in the full down position.

 

[TheGreenPhantom]

Surprised by all this full stick down definitely stops the Phantom motors talk. The Phantom is programmed to descend at no more than 3 meters per second full stick down (mainly to stop it from entering Vortex Ring State I believe). I come down at full stick down from almost every flight including yesterday from 180 meters when I could hear (but not see) a heli. The Phantoms motors definitely don't stop at full throttle down, and I mostly fly with Litchi.

The only situation I could imagine that happening was if the Phantom was caught in some super strong thermal